Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group Blog

Last May 2009 the Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group (MWTS) volunteers were polishing up the Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers(WCTMB) version one and thinking of a new test. Nine months later our next little baby is due, version two of the WCTMB.

In this fresh forward looking 2.0 test we hope to encourage key technologies that will make the mobile platform simply rock. Of course we have the usual suspects like AJAX support and canvas which were tested in the WCTMB v1 test too. However we gear up by checking for Geolocation support which is very relevant to mobile users and for various helpful offline technologies like application cache and Web storage. These offline technologies help the Web in areas where Internet may be unreliable, which is a lot of places on most mobile devices!

We also make a daring leap into the fray to ask for support of video and audio, which is quite demanding on a mobile device. We allow for all sorts of codecs, though midi files and animated gifs won't pass. :)

We also test for new input types, rich text editing and font face support which could be a workaround where phones have a poor font, for instance for a particular locale. No matter where you are from or what language you speak, we hope to entangle you in the Web with any device to hand.

So go and test your mobile with the new test and if your browser scores a 110% you are cheating.

Thank you and we welcome your feedback on our mailing list.

We have just published a Working Group Note called A Method for Writing Testable Conformance Requirements. This document presents a method for writing, marking-up, and analyzing conformance requirements in technical specifications that can help other Working Groups develop better specifications more quickly.

We derived this methodology from our collaboration with the Web Applications Working Group on the development of the test suite for the Widgets Packaging & Configuration specification.

Feedback on the document is more than welcome!

“The cornerstone of all testing done on the core of the Opera browser is our automated regression testing system, named SPARTAN. The system consists of a central server and about 50 test machines running our 120 000 automated tests on all core reference builds. The purpose of this system is to help us discover any new bugs we introduce as early as possible, so that we can fix them before they cause any trouble for our users.”

Read more on the Core Concerns blog.